In the last six months I have had a lot of enjoyment seeing many people and traveling many miles. I have managed to visit a lot of old friends and meet a bunch of new ones while putting a lot of miles behind me.
I hope to do a lot more after the New Year, but have enjoyed taking a month off to do very little, but am also glad it is coming to an end so that I can get back to seeing more of the world.
El Salvador is calling, and so is Panama. The canal has always had a distant call to me, the amount of work and planning that went into its construction and how much it changed the flow of commerce and people makes for great history.
I made the mistake of leaving for a walk without taking my camera yesterday. The locals here in San Pedro had a festival happening with a dance in the middle of the street. There were about 25 dancers, all in costume with masks. the masks were modern latex ones, but showed a wide variety of faces including a pirate, old granny, bride, child and more. I liked it, but the traffic backed up for a couple blocks seemed to be frustrated . ;)
To all of you, be well any have a great time with the people you love.
Ken.
Tuesday 24 December 2013
Friday 13 December 2013
San Pedro, Dec 13th
Traveling is fun, but so is putting up your feet for a while. This post is going to be all about my impressions of the little town of San Pedro La Laguna. I have been here for three weeks, and plan on staying here until Christmas.
There is a division in this town, between the tourists and the locals, with the line never clearly drawn and the businesses straddling it all the time. The general division is how close to the lake you are, the places closest to the lake serve the tourists, and the ones up the mountainside tend to be for the ones who live here.
It is a fair hike to get up the hill to the local market where the fresh produce is sold, with major market days on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. the place is cramped and small, and crawling with people.
When you walk along the streets, it seems like every third door is for a small store, whether they are selling phones, chips and candy, canned goods or fabric and clothing the one thing they all have in common is that they are small. The biggest ones are half the size of a typical 7/11. Very few of the stores have decent lighting.
The restaurants and cafes here are very much into the open and airy concept. Most of them have a portion which has no roof, and most have partitions to break up the larger areas. Some have a garden setting and the ones on the lakeside do their best to give a nice view of it.
The local cuisine is not really featured in the cafes, with Mexican being the closest to local style featured. There are about five places that specialize in Mexican, plus three food carts that do so. Two places have sushi, and most have seafood.
There are some things I miss, and decent processed meat is one. Although I believe that the amount of chemicals to be found in pepperoni to be less than healthy, it is darn hard to find a pizza down here with it.
On the other hand, most of the chicken is free range, and most of the beef is grass fed. Makes for way better flavour, and better tasting burgers. I have only had one burger here so far, at a place called D'Noz, and it was better than all but a few I have ever had. Billed as a chilli burger, it was topped with fire grilled mild chilli peppers, fresh jalapeno slices, ripe roma tomatoes, cilantro and in the place of honour, right in the middle was a whole clove of garlic. Totally made my day.
On the serious side of things, I have not had any problems with robber etc, but a number of others have. There are hikes to the top of nearby volcanoes and on a few of those there have been people robbed and assaulted. The police have been a larger presence in the past week, and from what the guides say it is coming under control, but it is still a concern and shot have been exchanged between the police and the thieves on at least two occasions, including one over the prone bodies of a group of tourists. No police or tourists were hurt, and the thieves left the area rapidly. Rumour has it that if the police are unable to capture the robbers soon, the army will be brought in to sweep the area, which will be a very tense situation as the army has a bad reputation around the lake from incidents in the recent past.
My impression of the situation is that the authorities are doing their best to get the lawlessness under control as fast as they can without angering the local population. Everyone realizes that the amount of injuring/robbing people is bad but it is still happening.
All in all the area is safer than many in Latin America, but that does not mean that it is entirely safe.
There is a division in this town, between the tourists and the locals, with the line never clearly drawn and the businesses straddling it all the time. The general division is how close to the lake you are, the places closest to the lake serve the tourists, and the ones up the mountainside tend to be for the ones who live here.
It is a fair hike to get up the hill to the local market where the fresh produce is sold, with major market days on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. the place is cramped and small, and crawling with people.
When you walk along the streets, it seems like every third door is for a small store, whether they are selling phones, chips and candy, canned goods or fabric and clothing the one thing they all have in common is that they are small. The biggest ones are half the size of a typical 7/11. Very few of the stores have decent lighting.
The restaurants and cafes here are very much into the open and airy concept. Most of them have a portion which has no roof, and most have partitions to break up the larger areas. Some have a garden setting and the ones on the lakeside do their best to give a nice view of it.
The local cuisine is not really featured in the cafes, with Mexican being the closest to local style featured. There are about five places that specialize in Mexican, plus three food carts that do so. Two places have sushi, and most have seafood.
There are some things I miss, and decent processed meat is one. Although I believe that the amount of chemicals to be found in pepperoni to be less than healthy, it is darn hard to find a pizza down here with it.
On the other hand, most of the chicken is free range, and most of the beef is grass fed. Makes for way better flavour, and better tasting burgers. I have only had one burger here so far, at a place called D'Noz, and it was better than all but a few I have ever had. Billed as a chilli burger, it was topped with fire grilled mild chilli peppers, fresh jalapeno slices, ripe roma tomatoes, cilantro and in the place of honour, right in the middle was a whole clove of garlic. Totally made my day.
On the serious side of things, I have not had any problems with robber etc, but a number of others have. There are hikes to the top of nearby volcanoes and on a few of those there have been people robbed and assaulted. The police have been a larger presence in the past week, and from what the guides say it is coming under control, but it is still a concern and shot have been exchanged between the police and the thieves on at least two occasions, including one over the prone bodies of a group of tourists. No police or tourists were hurt, and the thieves left the area rapidly. Rumour has it that if the police are unable to capture the robbers soon, the army will be brought in to sweep the area, which will be a very tense situation as the army has a bad reputation around the lake from incidents in the recent past.
My impression of the situation is that the authorities are doing their best to get the lawlessness under control as fast as they can without angering the local population. Everyone realizes that the amount of injuring/robbing people is bad but it is still happening.
All in all the area is safer than many in Latin America, but that does not mean that it is entirely safe.
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